An Augmented Reality Interface for Endoscopic Ear Surgery

We herein introduce our recent research on an image-guided surgery (IGS) interface for otological procedures. We designed the IGS screen to show selected information that is considered to be most important for the surgeon. Since the “importance” of this information changes during a surgical procedure, the information on the screen is selected and updated during an operation. As a result, surgeons found that essential information was highlighted because the system minimized the overall amount of information within the surgeon’s view. Research on IGS interfaces is a relatively new field of study, and current technology tends to aim at delivering as much information to the surgeon as possible. Future studies on IGS interfaces should progress toward selecting the information that is important at different time-points within an operation, and toward the effective delivery of relevant information to the surgeon.